


Living Legacies

by kyanve



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Gen, Lotor's background is kind of its own warning, Started work before S6, abuse is a thing, messing with Lotor's dignity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 15:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15709896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: When Lotor finds an old assistant drone belonging to Alfor, he thinks he’s scored the jackpot on access to all of Alfor’s research.Unfortunately, the drone has a very literal mind of her own, and instead Lotor is trying to keep up with a very opinionated AI with her own ideas of how to help.(I started on this before S6 so it's very much not canon compliant.  I don't actually have a problem with canon, I just couldn't make this idea work with it the way I'd wanted it, so.  AU time!  Also some later chapters have art by the wonderful AlgernonBlue.)





	Living Legacies

The dead hulk of a ship had the basic outline of a battlecruiser, but not much more; even wrecked, it was a testament to how much had changed since the start of the Empire. It was also bent and broken, tattered enough to be little more than scrap without anything resembling basic systems; no gravity, no atmosphere, rents into the open void scattered through the halls and some of the chambers open to space. 

A ghost ship, left as an example - one of the first of countless others like it. 

He was picking through the halls, scanning rooms to get bearings while he searched for the parts of the ship where anything important might be; Axca was following behind him more slowly, both out of caution and taking more time to check some of what they passed through. It wasn't unusual for him to bring one of them along on some of his expeditions with little to no explanation until much later, when he was sure he had something useful and it was time to use it. 

There was an understanding that if it came down to it, Haggar or the Druids couldn't rend out things they didn't know. 

It didn't prevent all conversation and comment. 

"I don't think I've seen this exact configuration of a ship even in the historical archives." 

"That would be because the design predates the Empire as we know it." The captain's quarters would be close, if he remembered the older schematics he'd checked right. They'd found just enough marked out in the ship to confirm that he'd found the right hulk, bits of debris and old effects that weren't Galra at all. "This is the personal command vessel of High Commander Thexra." 

Axca paused uneasily, floating next to one of the warped bulkheads. "The legendary traitor?" 

"By the official history, yes; she turned on Zarkon when he began his more sweeping conquests and 'harbored criminals and subversive elements' - rendering aid to leaders and survivors of other civilizations Zarkon was enslaving or wiping out." To the Empire, she'd gone down in history as a terrorist bent on destabilizing the Galra and putting them subject to others; translated out of propoganda, Lotor had pieced together someone who'd been a part of the old Coalition that objected to Zarkon destroying it and refused to obey his orders to turn on the others. "Her main ships and hideaways were destroyed and placed off-limits, to serve as reminders of what happened to any who defied the Emperor." He shoved one of the nonfunctioning doors open with no small amount of bitterness in his voice. 

It took Axca a couple more ticks to process and take it in stride. "That explains why it hasn't been picked clean ages ago, then." 

Trespassing in ruins that Zarkon had declared taboo wasn't that unusual for them. 

"Is there anything I should be looking for?" 

"Storage media intact enough to still have records or files, important looking personal effects or personal devices - my father may not have searched these hulks in his efforts to erase the civilizations he's destroyed, and I found some references to Thexra aiding Alteans in particular." The details of his plans might have been on need-to-know basis, but Axca was aware of his heritage and aware of his efforts to reconstruct Altean alchemy and technology.

It was enough explanation for her to give a nod of understanding and turn to the wreckage with renewed focus. 

Even if the vacuum had well preserved most of what remained, there were signs here and there that they hadn't been the first to investigate the wreck, Zarkon's bans or no; there was an awful irony that some of what might have been of use from this hulk had likely turned up in some of their finds on the black market in the past, and others were still out there, getting passed around by pirates and collectors. He could only hope some of it had passed into hands that had a clue what they had and how important it was - pieces of an entire lost history that proved there was something other than Zarkon's bleak hellscape.

Then he noticed something off in part of what had once been the command quarters; an area where there should've been another entire room and no reason for there to be much in the way of maintenance passages or other machinery behind the wall to account for it. 

It took some work to find the archaic catch for the hidden door, and effort to force it open with the ancient machinery no longer working, but it paid off in a hidden refuge. The small room would've been servicable living space, easy to keep concealed in case of an attack, although it was a little cramped with storage compartments and shelves, bits and objects from several different lost civilizations drifting where there was no longer artificial gravity to keep them down. For a moment he almost forgot he wasn't alone in the room, nudging through the door to the center where he could start catching things out of the air - a thin ceremonial dagger, a handful of small crystalline storage media strung on a tether, an intricately carved seashell slightly bigger than his head. 

He was distracted enough to startle when Axca spoke up, quietly amused. "I'll go get the cargo loader." 

He stiffened, pulling his decorum back, hands still on the carved shell. "Of course. It will be easier to sort through all of this in a more secure environment." He paused, looking down at the artifact that hadn't seen an atmosphere in ten thousand years. "Make sure the preservation systems are functioning properly; we don't want to lose anything to carelessness." 

"Of course." She gave a half-salute and turned to fetch the cargo lift from where they'd hidden it on the way in, leaving him alone in the small hideout. 

He'd have time to go through all of it when they got back, and space hidden out of sight to store all of it securely and without Zarkon finding out. He wasn't even sure of the origin of all of it, but he was almost certain there was a decent amount of it that came from the races that had once been other central parts of the coalition - the other species that had been involved in Voltron. 

Most of what had been on the shelves was objects more suitable for display; he turned his attention to some of the containers, crates set aside in stacks. 

One had personal effects and a few trinkets that were disappointingly Galran, if different in style from what he was used to; still worth saving, since it was probably remnants of parts of the culture Zarkon had been intent on erasing. There was another with sealed specimen containers that he closed as soon as he'd verified that much - those would be easier to identify back at his own small workshop.

Another seemed to be neatly packed luggage, a distinctly Altean surcoat folded over the top. 

He held his breath, lifting it carefully to get a better look; white and blue with gold trim, definitely made for someone shorter and smaller than him, although there was an odd give to the fabric as if it were made to accommodate a wider range of builds without needing adjustment. There were a few symbols embroidered along the collar - the symbol that'd been used to signify the old Coalition, long familiar to Lotor by now, and one other next to it that wasn't an incredibly common sigil and took a moment's study to identify.

The symbol of the Red Lion, the Guardian Spirit of Fire.

He was holding King Alfor's surcoat. The contents of the rest of the case were other clothing, tool cases slipped in among them, small containers and effects just among what he could spot without rummaging through it, all definitely Altean and almost certainly all Alfor's; definitive proof that Alfor had not been hostile to the Galra in general in his last days, and had, in fact, taken shelter at some point with a Galran commander. 

 

There was something oval nestled in the middle of it - a small drone, similar in scale to the little observation and assistant drones that roamed Imperial ships, but sleeker, white, smoother curves with the lines of inlaid markings that would glow when it was powered. He'd found a few before in Altean ruins, but some of the outer shell looked altered, different from what he'd managed to restore.

It had to a personal assistant model; there would be no other reason for it to be packed in with personal effects like that. 

It was past the wildest dreams he'd had of what he might find - with what drones like that were used for, it probably had everything from regular logs to personal journals to backups of research and designs; an archive of Alfor's studies, life's work, and mastery of Altean alchemy, along with more simple daily documentation of Altean culture and life than he'd found in one place intact ever before, well preserved and kept hidden. 

Axca cleared her throat in the doorway, and he stiffened, shoving the surcoat into the crate and back over the drone. 

"The cargo loader is ready. How much longer are we going to be here?" 

There was an implied entirely valid concern there; the longer they stayed, the higher the risk of some patrol passing through the area realizing there was activity around the wreckage. "Just long enough to make sure we have the contents of this room stowed securely; we can always check back later for any other hidden surprises." 

*******************************************

The dance of finding sources of cover radiation to jump between and obstacles that would interfere with sensors just enough to bring the small ship back into the outpost they were not supposed to leave was routine enough that they probably could've done it in their sleep. There weren't other living inhabitants most of the time; there'd been a great deal of effort put into subverting the drone guards just enough to have some privacy without alerting the occasional security check-ins that they'd tampered with everything meant to monitor them. 

Nobody reacted to their arrival until they had the ship stashed away in the central part of the small post, within the space where they wouldn't be recorded. 

He half expected to be accosted stepping off the ship, but there was silence in the hangar; they were able to get the cargo loader off the ship in peace, set to hover obediently along with them so it could be brought into one of the hideaways carved out of the moon the outpost was hidden on. 

The door into the outpost opened to a blur of color hanging upside down from above it. "YOU'RE BACK!"

He only slightly twitched and did not move his hand more than a hair towards his sword, and it was entirely because of far too long spent around Ezor and her habit of appearing out of nowhere. There had been a time when she'd kept enough space to avoid any mishaps after a close call startling him at a bad time, but as he'd grown used to her shenanigans enough for his reflexes to grow a blind spot for her color patterns, she'd slowly shrunk that bubble until now, almost nose to nose.

"Did you get anything good?"

He stayed still in the doorway, staring ahead. "We were surveying an old wreck, not supply shopping. While there were things of use to my research, I doubt there's anything of interest to you." 

She mock-wilted, dropping down down with a twist to land on her feet in front of him. "Fine, fine. I've still got dibs on the next black market run, though."

"I haven't forgotten." He hadn't moved, looking ahead long suffering and waiting.

It seemed to be enough to pacify her, as she headed back into the outpost still in actual decent cheer; he would need to arrange some kind of supply run to the black markets sometime soon, before she started getting bored enough to lapse into wreaking havoc. 

They got the loader almost to the door out of the docking bay when Kova slipped through the door. That wasn’t unusual; Kova pausing, then farting past to jump up onto the loader, sniffing around it with sudden determination, was. 

Narti waited outside the door, head canted and tail ticking. 

"Just some artifacts that escaped other notice when my father and his followers were purging things," he offered as a lazy explanation. 

Narti wasn't moving to make contact or otherwise ask questions, but she did very pointedly move to mimic visual-tracking towards the loader. Kova was sitting perched on top of it, head tilted at Lotor with a loud miaow.

"I need time to properly catalogue everything." He folded his arms, making eye contact with the cat. The most he'd ever managed to find about where the cat had come from was that Kova had once belonged to his mother - which meant that Kova like had been around Alfor himself, some time in the distant past.

He could only hope Narti caught the hint to keep quiet on it, because if Kova had caught a familiar scent, then she knew he'd found something more substantial of Alfor's than an occasional fragmented copy of some published speech or bit of research on a file. 

Kova's tail lashed and her ears flicked before she jumped down off of it, walking back to Narti to hop up onto her shoulder; Narti inclined her head with a half-nod, and turned to leave. Axca tracked the whole exchange with curious trepidation - Lotor had never been hostile to questions, but evasive and avoidant had definitely been common trends whenever details of his past and Kova's came up. 

When they got the loader to the hidden entrance to his workspace, she excused herself to leave him to it without any further questions.

It took him a while to get things unpacked and sorted better; things he would need to take to more hidden and secure caches that weren't at risk of being destroyed if Zarkon or Haggar decided to search his space, things that were dicey but that he could probably transport quickly or stash in his things if he had to run, things that were probably going into secure storage that weren't necessarily valuable beyond being remnants of dead civilizations, things he would be going through to repair before he decided where to put them. 

Alfor's effects were going into one of the secure caches, no contest; he didn't want to consider his father's reaction to finding Lotor still keeping reminders of the Altean king, particularly ones that he had to seek out himself - he'd learned to hide any interest in King Alfor ages ago, when he was younger and hadn't realized how violently Zarkon would react to him finding Alfor's sword stashed away gathering dust. 

He still was surprised he hadn't ended up with scars.

The drone was the first thing he took to the main worktable. Despite his father's best efforts to scour out Altean ruins and wrecks, Lotor had found an occasional assistant drone before; there hadn't been anything dramatic on any of them - simple little things not much different from some of the Galra observers and equivalent assistants, with the documents, and daily routines of administrators and outpost personnel. It'd always been things most would consider "of little value", but they were priceless in their own way as glimpses into what Altean civilization, culture, and daily life had been. 

The similarities to the Galran equivalents felt like vestiges of how close their civilizations and peoples had once been; any Galran documentation would cite it as a coincidence of what was useful for a similar function, but he suspected that wasn't the entire truth. 

The outer chassis looked like any of the others he'd found, but the inside under the maintenance access panel was anything but. It took him several long vargas of carefully opening casing pieces and examining the workings just to get his bearings; the internal computers were as much alchemical arrays and delicate crystal structures as conventional computer components. He could follow enough of it to repair time-damaged systems and make sure everything was in place, but there were still components where he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at. 

It took another few vargas of messing with the power hookups to have any progress in his attempts at jump-starting the tiny drone's systems. The power system seemed to just refuse to connect to most of the power systems on the small, abandoned Galra outpost station they'd moved into and refurbished, but some sort of security system definitely responded, leaving him with a couple short, nasty shocks. 

Of course, Alfor would have some countermeasures in place against unfamiliar Galra messing with his personal files, records, and research; what Lotor had found suggested there'd been more than enough time for Alfor to know what direction Zarkon was taking their people and that the truth of his death had probably been trying to interfere with it. 

Nothing worked until he managed to scrounge up a small container of unrefined quintessence, working carefully with droppers and small tools to feed it into what should've been the central power system; he wasn't sure what he did or how it worked, but it apparently worked, the crystal that filled where the power system should've been flickering to a soft glow while a few recessed lines along the sleek form of the small drone flickered to life, running through the patterns of a standard boot cycle.

The boot cycle patterns stayed flashing longer than they should've, the lights flickering in and out without any sign of it finalizing. 

He frowned, starting to worry that he was going to have to try to cut power and go back to everything he had on Altean alchemy until he could figure out how to fix what was damaged, when there was a sudden alert on his own terminal - his files on his isolated system being accessed without his identification. The problem with the drone was briefly forgotten as he focused on the terminal; someone breaking in was an immediate threat that could compromise everything, particularly at a time like this.

It was more alarming because it shouldn't have been possible; he'd intentionally kept his computer in the workroom disconnected from any other system in the station, using physical storage media on the occasions he'd needed to move files. The intrusion was from an unknown source that his own security programs couldn't pin down or trace, and was accessing files, journals, and bits of his research almost at random. 

His first thought was something in the computers that he'd missed - something Haggar had slipped into the background shells and hardwiring of standard systems that'd escaped him scouring it clean and rebuilding this terminal from scratch, a trap meant to watch for anything of Alfor's; then some kind of other trick somehow accessing the parts of the network apparatus he hadn't been able to completely disconnect in an intentional outside hack. 

The last thing he needed was the witch realizing what he'd found.

He was absorbed enough that he hadn't noticed the drone's lights hitting a normal, active configuration, or that it'd silently lifted up to float just over his shoulder, until there was a synthetic female voice behind him.

"You know, of all the things I had expected to wake up to, this honestly wasn't on the list." 

He startled, wheeling around with a hand on his sword; his security software ran a few confused cycles, then settled, the intrusion gone as suddenly as it had started. There wasn't any sign of threat or anyone else present, just the drone, floating in front of him.

He stared at it, blinking dumbly. "Come again?"

"Well, I mean, the last we'd known you were uh. Not alive as far as we knew. Kind of a new dimension on how much those two idiots had managed to screw up." The voice had definitely come from the drone; he straightened, trying not to lapse into a ruffled scowl. It didn't entirely work. Before he could even properly respond or process the try insult at his parents, the drone was talking again. "Oh, don't look at me like that. If I thought you were up to anything completely horrible after going through your stuff, I would've been frying as much of your computer as I could, and then going back on hard shutdown." 

"...You...what?" The drone. The drone had been the one getting into his systems. That wasn't supposed to be a thing they did, at all.

"Oh come on, what did you expect me to do waking up on some strange Galra station with someone trying to hook me up to - whatever the quiznak that was? I only loosened the shutdown protocol because you were smart enough to stop poking me with that weird distorted crap, and because it was a little hard to stay asleep with that kind of booster fuel dropped in."

"...You used my diagnostic systems to get into my workroom computer and go through all of my private files." As much as the drone had a point about having entirely valid reasons for paranoia, it was still uncomfortable to process.

And not something that kind of drone should've been able to do, but then, they also weren't supposed to have fully self-aware AI's, either. 

"I was honestly expecting this to be some stunt of Zarkon's at first, and like Wozblay was I going to hold still for that, but then I didn't really want to start torching things if someone friendly had tripped over me that just didn't know what they were doing... and, well, that's pretty much what happened, it looks like." 

There was a vague hint of apology in the drone's tone, even if not much of one. 

"And that was all it took for you to decide I was 'friendly'?" He squinted at the drone, unsure what to make of it.

"Well, I mean, the schematics didn't tell me much and you have a _lot_ of archived _stuff_ in here. I stopped after the third journal entry I found that was going on about lost knowledge and what could've been learned if Zarkon hadn't .... er... okay I admit I've never seen some of those languages before but I definitely got the sentiment there."

He inhaled slowly, burying his face in one hand to rub the bridge of his nose.

Alfor had put a fully self-aware independent AI in his personal assistant drone, and Lotor had no idea what the restrictions or overrides were, if there even were any. 

"Anyway, I saw enough, since I really don't think you were prepared to fake any of that." 

He raised his head enough to give the drone a dim, narrow glare. Justified paranoia or not, he did not appreciate people going through his private files. "So you're Alfor's personal assistant computer."

"Tila." 

He paused, trying to gather himself enough to parse what he was dealing with and what that was; he hadn't heard of that kind of system designation before. "Eh?"

"My name is Tila, and I worked with Alfor pretty much his entire life." 

"...So you were a gift of some sort?" It seemed like the simplest explanation for what the little drone was implying.

"Nope!" She was almost chirping the words. "When he was a kid he didn't bother to read why people didn't make hybrid-type AI's in small machinery. I just sorta happened."

The more complex magic was integrated into a machine, the more likely the energy structure was to take on some kind of life of its own. Haggar tended to exploit it, setting up the system to guide the energy into what she wanted, then layering controls and overrides to ensure she had control. 

It was both awe-inspiring that Alfor had managed to accomplish something that complex as a child, and a little terrifying to realize that an accidental sapient system probably _didn't_ have any functional restrictions on its behavior, or what shapes it could twist itself into in order to do things outside of its intended abilities and programming. 

He was not going to think about that right now, settling for trying to banish the headache that was threatening to move in. "So how much of my journals did you read." 

"Only like, five or six entries in detail." She paused. “I _do_ know who you are - it’s kind of obvious when you call Zarkon ‘your father’ in among the colorful names.” 

He gave the drone a weary look, unsure how that matched up with anything else the drone had said. 

“.... Look, I’m trying not to ask any ‘how’ questions here, because that seems like a _little_ much to pry into in five minutes, but from what I saw in the journal entries and the way you’ve been hoarding archives, you’re not a threat, and Alfor would’ve probably been kidnapping you to go poke things all the time if Zarkon hadn’t gotten stupid and then undead or whatever.” 

The drone was talking rapidly, and her earlier comment slowly crept up on him - in jump starting the power system, he’d done the equivalent of giving it stimulants. 

That was a distracted aside as the drone’s hyperactive ramble sank in.

"I... what?" 

The bits and references he'd managed to find researching Altea and trying to track down the past had included references to Alfor as an alchemist, adventurer and scholar with a love of seeking out other cultures and chasing mysteries. There had been times in his quest to understand the other half of his heritage and the past his father had destroyed where he'd half wished he could've at least known the Altean King, if not been Alfor's son rather than Zarkon's. 

Daydreaming about the chance to just ask questions - and entertaining the belief that Alfor would humor it - was usually about all he'd thought would've happened, even if there were occasional little further-off fantasies that were almost painful to consider of going along on Alfor's research and travels. 

He wasn't sure he'd even allowed himself to commit those to anything computer-accessible; those sorts of frivolities were potentially dangerous enough that he'd avoided putting them down at all. 

There was no way for the drone to've known about it.

"Come again?" 

There was a pause where the little drone shifted position in air, somehow managing 'visibly confused' with very little to convey expression. "You're bright, curious, interested in a lot of the same things he used to research, and he had a habit of adopting people if he was given half a chance?" The front lens refocused. "You'd also kinda be his godson technically, but that's kind of a messy subject right now." 

"I. He." Lotor was trying to come up with some sort of working sentence, some way to get this to make sense, but everything coherent kept scattering, and he was actually feeling a little dizzy. "Explain?" 

There was another silent few ticks with a couple faint whirs of lense refocusing. "...Okay, revising that. If Alfor were here now I think he'd need talked out of a badly planned attempt at killing Zarkon, then he'd just decide you were his son now and walk off with you." 

If anything, that made the weird vertigo worse; he took a wobbly step back and sat down heavily on the nearest chair, hands draped over his knees. 

The drone hovered forward, maintaining the same distance, and dropped to stay on eye level. "...Er. You ok there?"

" _Fine,_ " he snapped, bristling and pulling back before remembering what he was dealing with and trying to smooth over the frazzled nerves. "I'm fine. I just. Need a moment to think, that's all." 

The drone did float back, giving some space. "....Riiiiight." 

He straightened his posture, working on recovering. He wasn't going to dwell on what the drone had said right now; he had things to actually worry about. "Anyway, if you've paid attention at all, I'm sure you can imagine what would happen if my father were to find out you were functional again." 

"...Trust me, I know." The drone sounded bitter and _angry_ , even if it was quiet; he had to wonder what Tila had seen before she'd shut down. 

"This facility is still registered as abandoned scrap, separate from my 'official' living quarters - it's off-record, but its only real defense is appearing useless. It's safe enough, for now, but we cannot risk attention being drawn to it, particularly with you present." He folded his arms, leaning back. "Zarkon's pet witch has minions; many of them can read the minds of the unwary or unprepared, which means that not even potential allies can know of your existence for the time being - you need to _stay hidden_ and mind what you get into. Much has changed in the last ten thousand years." 

"...Right. Stay hidden. Got it." 

He wasn't sure he trusted that tone. "Don't test that - you could bring Zarkon and Haggar down on all of our heads." 

************************************************

_**MESSAGE FROM: Tila** _  
_HEY CORAN! Holy quiznak I did not expect to see the Castle show up as able to receive messages. I take it the lions really took their sweet time waking back up. How are you, how's Allura, what're the new Paladins like?_

 

_**MESSAGE FROM: Coran** _  
_Tila! I thought I'd never hear from you again!_

_Just ignore everything I was typing and deleting. Not one word._

_Anyway, yes, they did. They really, really did. I'm about as well as I could be, I suppose, Allura's adjusting but doing well. The new Paladins are a bunch of youngsters from some primitive backwater that's barely explored their own solar system - it's adorable and endearing, really. We only just got the Castle off the ground, heading out to see what we can manage to do. The tactical maps look bleak, but ... well, that's what the Paladins are for._

_How did you get reactivated? Where are you?_

 

_**MESSAGE FROM: Tila** _  
_You are not gonna believe this. You remember that thing Alfor and Trigel kinda agreed not to tell anybody because there wasn't much point to adding something ELSE to how awful everything was? Well, he's not dead! Like, I think he's actually MORE not dead than his Dad! Not creepy undead or anything! I got picked up out of some old ruins, he wasn't expecting me to talk back _at all_ , I think he was just hoping to find Alfor's old notes and research or something. _

_I'm still poking through everything here, he's kinda paranoid and jumpy like you wouldn't believe, but yanno, growing up with that for a parent, it's no wonder the kid's a mess. Anyway he's got some kind of little hideout on some abandoned piece of junk, from some of the stuff in his journals he's got some resources but stuff Zarkon doesn't know about and can't figure out to track is pretty hard to get - I saw something about going through a few different hideouts like this one before when Zarkon had temper tantrums or something. Probably better to not show up saying hi until we know we can get away with it._

_I'll be fine, you know what I went through with Alfor._

 

_**MESSAGE FROM: Coran** _  
_Ancestors, do I. We've got our hands full just getting our bearings right now ourselves, so don't worry, my lips are sealed, but this line is always open._


End file.
